Monthly Archives: October 2016

Photograph of General William T. Sherman and Commissioners in Council with Indian Chiefs at Fort Laramie, Wyoming, ca. 1868 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

CNN reports that protesters from around the world continue to congregate in North Dakota in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux and their struggle to stop construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline through (or placed so as to negatively affect) tribal lands.

The issues and the divide between sides seem to be fairly conventional: Promises of jobs and economic growth motivate the pipeline’s supporters. Its opponents cite environmental concerns (especially the prospective damage to tribal lands) and allege violations of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 in Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners’ wheedling of land use permissions out of federal and state governments.

On balance, the opponents seem to have a good case; the supporters not much of a case at all.

For more than a century and a half the US government has selectively ignored its treaties with the Standing Rock Sioux and other tribes whenever those treaties threaten to stymie the plans of corporations with friends in government. Successfully holding Washington to its word this time might give the politicians and their cronies pause next time.

And even if letting the US government use treaties as toilet paper just because it can wasn’t an incredibly corrosive idea, keep in mind that it’s not just the Sioux who are getting mugged. Private land owners all along the pipeline’s 1,100 mile route are feeling the pain, too. Like Keystone XL before it, ETP leverages government’s power of “eminent domain” — under the pretense that the pipeline is some kind of public service rather than the private for-profit enterprise it actually is — to steal much of the land required to complete Dakota Access.

The go-to excuse among proponents of these “public/private partnership” type land thefts is always “jobs and economic development,” but even if that excuse flew (it doesn’t), it’s a pretty poor one in this case. The $3.7 billion pipeline is advertised as creating a whopping 40 permanent jobs. I’m not sure how many people work at the average Wal-Mart, but it looks like more than 40 to me. How many jobs in agriculture and other sectors would Dakota Access destroy along the way? We have no way of knowing.

For me, the bottom line is this: If the only way to do something you want to do involves stealing other people’s stuff, you shouldn’t do it. And you certainly shouldn’t get government help to do it. Dakota Access is the opposite of the American way.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

It’s finally election time — as I write this, early voting is already under way in many states. You may have already voted. Even if haven’t, you probably know who you’re voting for. But if you live in Colorado, it’s illegal to tell anyone who you voted for, or who you think someone else might have voted for.

Yes, really. It’s right there in black and white in Colorado Revised Statute §1-13-712, section 3: “No election official, watcher, or person shall reveal to any other person the name of any candidate for whom a voter has voted or communicate to another his opinion, belief, or impression as to how or for whom a voter has voted.”

Caryn Ann Harlos objects. Strenuously. She’s the communications director of the Libertarian Party of Colorado and sits on the party’s national committee, so you can probably guess how she’s voting. But she’s not allowed to tell you, even though “communications” is right there in her job title.

Oh, and according to section 2 of the same law, you can’t ask her, either: “No person shall endeavor to induce any voter to show how he marked his ballot.”

Harlos petitioned Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman and Denver District Attorney Mich Morrissey to publicly recognize the blatant unconstitutionality of this law. They declined. So, in concert with two other plaintiffs and the aid of the libertarian Our America Initiative, Harlos filed suit in US District Court. They’re asking, for among other things, a preliminary injunction and restraining order to protect voters, pollsters, journalists, and neighborhood gossips from arrest. The first hearing is scheduled for November 2nd.

Federal judges in New Hampshire and Michigan have already ruled against “ballot selfie” laws, as well they should have. It’s pretty much a constitutional slam-dunk. The act of voting doesn’t create an exception to your free speech rights. The scope of the Colorado law is particularly egregious. Coffman and Morrissey are wasting tax money — and disrespecting Colorado’s voters — by defending it.

The Libertarian Party’s candidates don’t win many elections. In fact, they usually come in a distant third in any three-way race. But Libertarian Party and libertarian movement activists are stepping up to defend your rights. If Caryn Ann Harlos has her way, you’ll be free not just to vote for a Democrat or Republican, but to publicly say you did so. Think about that when you enter the voting booth.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka “ObamaCare,” was intended to dramatically increase the number of Americans with health coverage while “bending the cost curve” (that is, reducing the expected increases in price over time).

The plan managed the first goal, at least in the short term. Unsurprising, isn’t it, that more people get coverage when the law requires them to buy it, penalizes those who won’t, and subsidizes those who can’t afford to?

But the progress on that metric is beginning to disintegrate and we’re moving in the other direction. Bloomberg reports that 1.4 million Americans in 32 states will lose their health plans next year as major providers pull out of the ObamaCare “exchanges” because they’re losing money. Apaprently a business has to take in more than it spends if it wants to remain a going concern. I’m sure I’ve read that somewhere.

As far as “bending the cost curve” is concerned … well … according to the US Department of Health and Human Services, cited by US News & World Report, average premiums rose by 7.5% last year and will rise by 25% in 2017. Price inflation for most consumer goods over the 2015-2016 period averaged a little more than 1%. Forgive me for thinking that when costs increase at 7-25 times the rate of inflation, that’s not really a lot of “bend” to the “curve.”

In 2009, I described (the then notional, yet to be passed into law) ObamaCare as “[g]overnment feeds you to the insurance companies, while simultaneously feeding the insurance companies to you. The state takes home a doggie bag.” Which is about the size of it, and I was far from the only person who noticed and warned that the plan not only wouldn’t work, but COULDN’T work, if the goal was reducing costs and increasing access to health care. Artificially increasing demand relative to supply can only have the opposite effects.

Since 2010, Republicans (who, by the way, first proposed the “individual mandate” scheme) have slowly but surely retreated from the idea of repealing ObamaCare and replacing it with nothing, instead proposing various schemes for keeping government as involved as possible in health care while pretending to “return” it to “the free market” (there hasn’t been a free market in health care for more than a century, since the American Medical Association got licensing schemes imposed by the states so that it could limit the number of doctors and thereby keep their salaries high).

Most Americans are now worse off vis a vis health care than they were six years ago. The only winners have been government health bureaucrats. And unfortunately, the politicians don’t seem to be interested in getting out of the way and letting the market fix things. Next stop: “Single payer.”

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

To the extent possible under law,
Thomas L. Knapp
has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to
The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism.
This work is published from:
United States.

Note: The public domain dedication does NOT cover photos on the site, only text and audio. Photos are from off-site and will include license information via link or caption.